Sixth Unit camp - Brownsea Island

Last weekend was our sixth unit camp which was held @ Butchers Coppice near Poole.

We arrived at Cheddar Grove primary school at 7:00pm on Friday and were packed into two mini buses for the long drive down to Poole, about half an hour later, we actually left.
The journey was about three hours (we had a brief stop in a closed petrol station) and when we arrived we unpacked all our bags out of the trailer and unpacked Kevin's Land rover.
We then mucked about - as usual - for several hours, we also made business cards for when we're in Sweden. We had a brief talk about JTV (Jamboree TV) which is that the UK's big pavilion at the jamboree will have two 3m X 3m screens in it which each unit will show a 5 minute video on. I had already been asked to co-ordinate this and we decided that we would do our video on our visit to Brownsea island the next day. We then went to bed at about half 1.

The next morning we were woken at about 7:00am by Alan walking in wearing only his boxers - scary!
We had to catch the 10:00am ferry to Brownsea island so we quickly all had our showers, there was a massive queue!, had breakfast (veggie sausage sandwich for me) and made our lunch for the day.

We then all piled into the mini buses where I assumed the role of PJ's sat nav holder (because of family reasons Kathryn couldn't come for most of the camp so Anna's boyfriend - PJ who has been on 28th camps with me in the past came instead)
We arrived at sandbanks with plenty of time where we were told that because someone had been "frapped" (someone had gone on someone else's Facebook and written stuff without permission, we all had to hand our phones in. This was especially annoying because I had hoped that everyone would film lots of footage for JTV on their phones, instead we just had two video cameras from Kevin (I took one), and my still's camera which can also shoot in HD - this got passed around as much as possible.

We boarded the yellow ferry and after the 10 minute ride, we arrived at the island where we were told that we had to meet at the scout area of the island by 1:00pm and we had to have had lunch by then (it was about 10:15am)
We split up into various groups and after visiting a bird hide, walked along the south coast of the island until we reached the scout campsite where we met the Somerset - Apple WSJ unit and swapped badges with them.
We then ate our lunch and played a very British game of cricket using a random tennis ball we found and sticks that were roughly the correct length whilst we waited for 1:00pm

When the leaders appeared we went into the scout shop and history centre and some of us bought Brownsea island merchandise. We then went to the camp fire circle (which isn't a proper one as fires are not allowed on the island due to 2/3 of it burning down in the past) where we met someone from the national trust (who owns the island) who was going to take us through some of the activities that Lord Baden-Powell did on the first scout camp.
We were split into our patrols and named them after the four original patrols: Ravens, Curlews, Bulls and Wolves
We started off by learning to tie a reef knot, a clove hitch and sheet bend which were requirements of the 20 boys on the first camp. We then had a time trial to put a tent up in under 2 minutes - although we all did it in under 2 minutes, our patrol was last (Ravens). We then had to identify some trees which we did quite well at. After that we went down to the bit of beach by the original scout campsite and had to work out who's footprint was in the sand by studying the tread on everyone's shoes.
Then we played a game, like basketball where we threw balls into a raised sack, which we won!
That was followed by a game where we threw pine cones at some tin cans.
We then totalled up the scores and found out that the birds had won - the same result as what happened on the original camp.

After that we went up to the stone where we took various bit a video and photos before leisurely walking back to the side of the island that the boats go to so that we could go back on the last ferry. We then went back to where we were staying - Butchers Coppice where we played some cards and watched some of the video before me, Kevin and some others went to collect our dinner of Fish and Chips.
After dinner we had a talk from Natilie about sex ed for the jamboree where we put condoms on bananas, followed by a campfire and many of us including me and Kevin, edited together all the footage and produced our final JTV video (which I will post separately as soon as I have an uploadable copy) at around 2:00am - long after everyone else had gone to sleep

The next morning we woke up slightly later but in much the same way as the morning before. We then packed everything up and went into the mini buses and headed for Splash down. This was great fun, the only disappointment was that no-one could beat Simon's record of seven spins round the space bowl (Kevin got 6, Josh got 5, I got 2)
We then had about half an hour to go around tower hill (where splash down is) before we went back into the mini buses and headed back to Bristol :(